Spain: El Hierro will have specific line to adapt greenhouses to pineapple cultivation

This Saturday, it was announced in El Hierro that the Government is working on a new line of aid from the Rural Development Program of the Canary Islands, which will help pineapple growers on the Islands adapt their greenhouses to this crop, or fund the construction of new ones.

Fernando Clavijo, president of the Government of the Canary Islands, made this announcement during a meeting with agricultural producers of El Hierro, during which they also outlined the development of the regeneration plan for El Hierro's pineapple sector.

The project, executed by the Government of the Canary Islands, will receive over one million Euro in funding and aims to improve the product's production and marketing conditions. The island currently has about 130 hectares devoted to pineapple production and has an annual production of 1.3 million kilos, approximately.

Accompanied by the President of the Island Council, Belén Allende, and other insular and regional authorities, Clavijo and Narvay Quintero, Councilor of Agriculture, explained that the adverse and changing weather conditions cause great damage to various crops, so it is necessary for existing greenhouses "to adapt to these conditions, reducing their height, or to set up new equipment, already adapted to these conditions."

The project was launched in November 2017 with 1,050,000 Euro in credit thanks to a collaboration agreement between the regional government, the Island Council and the Cooperative Society Campo de Frontera and Frutas del Hierro.

Its objectives are to regenerate and improve the crop's marketing, establish quality parameters for the island's entire production, take advantage of financial resources and available subsidies and give a boost to the sector to help it meet the market demand.

To this end, a number of initiatives have been launched, such as a greenhouse research project to improve the rooting, hardening and maintenance of mother plants, or one focused in the recovery of organic matter and the manufacture of compost.

The tropical pineapple is a crop that has approximately three decades of history in the archipelago, which has been focusing its production on the Spanish red variety.